


The Pleasure Principle

by fluorescentgrey



Category: Black Mirror, Black Mirror: Bandersnatch (2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Developing Relationship, Drug Use, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mental Institutions, Open Relationships, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-10
Updated: 2019-01-10
Packaged: 2019-10-07 14:09:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17367314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fluorescentgrey/pseuds/fluorescentgrey
Summary: "You weren't exactly starting from square one on the road to madness."





	The Pleasure Principle

“Maybe you don’t think about that so fondly,” says Colin, “because you were quite ill.” 

“About what?” 

“The first time we were together.” 

“You think about it fondly then!” 

He shrugs. His face is flushed just so across the bridge of the nose, brightening the freckles. “Was your first time. Was quite honored really.” 

“Was worried I wasn’t very good.” 

“Pfft.” He went rooting around in his jacket pockets for his cigarettes. “It’s all relative.” 

“Relative to…” 

“Listen, it was quite an emotional high point, being as we were on acid, and I’d been wanting you, and it was your first time so — ”

“All I did was sit there.” 

“So? At the time it was quite titillating. I dunno. Maybe you need more sexual experience.” 

“Want to help with that?” 

“I am, darling.” He casts about with the big clever eyes at the grey day, the trees, the shadow of concrete and glass above the bucolic greens. “How about here.” 

You don’t even say anything with your mouth but rather WHAT with your whole body. 

“There’s no one here,” he announces indignantly. 

“This is a bloody public park in the middle of bloody London.” 

“Exactly. This is probably one of the most historic gay cruising spots in Europe, love.” 

\--

In the hospital Colin had come striding across the rec room without a care in the world and planted the World’s Tenderest Kiss on your cheek. Your eyes closed. His hand was on your neck and he smelled like cigarettes, burning paper, blood, spray paint, cannabis… At the beginning the antipsychotic dose they had you on — probably enough to knock out a lion — rendered the world mostly static with occasional jumps and flares. “Wotcher,” he said, pulling back, hand to your shoulder, squeezing, looking for something in your face, looking for yourself, you realized, looking for the version of yourself he knew, “went a little Syd Barrett there eh?” 

“What — who? But — ”

You touched your face where you could feel his lips like a sunburn. 

“Now I can’t kiss you,” Colin said, but his smile was wobbling, “even after last time…” 

You covered your mouth with your hand. Then you had to pick it up to say, or whisper really, “I thought that was a dream.” 

“No,” said Colin. The smile collapsed — like a soufflé, or like a mushroom cloud. “Was real.” 

“What about your bloody wife and child?” 

“Kit and I got married for the tax benefit,” Colin explained. His grin spread across his face as very slowly and sweetly as spilt molasses. “She’s got her own boyfriends. And girlfriends. As for Pearl she doesn’t care as long as someone feeds her.” 

Next time he came back with a handheld video game console and _The Madcap Laughs_ on cassette. He ended up taking the console back with him because you didn’t even want to look at it. You laid in your bed listening to the tape until the nurses came with your meds and said in their soft stilted way that it was time to put the music away now. This tone indicated that if you didn’t put the music away there would be immediate consequences. 

Syd sang: I really love you and I mean you, the star above you crystal blue… 

\--

The kiss (if you could remember the kiss, the kiss was not quite your-mind): he was holding your face and his eyes were melting. The light was of no color known to any other human mind and indeed for a moment in the proceedings you would thank every single historical god or goddess you could call to memory for making you like this and for LSD. On the stereo: Public Image Ltd. “This is not a love song…” 

The decision was made as decisions were made around that time. Your mind seemed to spiral out and clear. Kiss him, said something flashing neon. Not even a voice or a shape of words… his mouth in the changing stretching light was like nothing so poetic or gentle as a candy or a fruit. You kissed him, having done this with maybe three other people before, all in school, none of whom had ever spoken to you again after that. Daring to touch someone’s waist on a pile of coats on the bleachers until the chaperone came to break you up… Mmph, he said against your mouth. Then he shifted. You could feel the cool wire frame of his glasses against your face. And he tasted rich, because he used cream in his tea instead of milk. 

He sat you down on the couch and took your pants off. Your breath stopped fitting inside you. 

\--

“Kit’s with her new girl,” Colin says. “Tea?” 

He’s holding the baby against his chest kind of bouncing her while she hiccups. You stand on the threshold watching him put the kettle on one-handed. Eventually the baby quits hiccuping and stares at you, mesmerized by your face. You wave and she hides her eyes in Colin’s neck. 

“She’ll be down for a nap in twenty minutes,” says Colin. He comes over to you in the doorway and kisses your ear with extreme tenderness. “Then we can — well, have you played the new one from Jeff Byrne?” 

He puts Pearl to bed and then he comes and sits beside you on ye olde sanctified black leather sectional. He puts his hand inside your thigh and traces the seam of your jeans, studying you until you turn to him. Glasses magnify eyes. “You didn’t drug my tea again,” you say, checking. 

“No. Why?” 

“Nothing.” 

“Have got weed though — ”

“Shouldn’t. Thanks. The meds and all, you know…” 

He shows you the game, which is fine; the graphics are a little amateurish but the concept’s imaginative, and he asks you if you want to play but you say no (you haven’t touched anything at all since you shattered your computer over your desk), and instead you watch him play through again, watch his mouth, his hands, start feeling hot. “Colin.” 

“Hmm.” Jamming the joystick, not looking at you. 

You take his arm inside the wrist and press your thumb to the pulse. When he turns to you you say his name again but it makes hardly any sound. He gets you into his lap then on your back. Way too much to even get all each other’s clothes off. That terrible eight-bit music plays and plays. 

\--

The first time he comes to yours: 

“The room where it happened,” he says, surveying. 

“Yeah.” 

“Where’s all your — ”

“Burned it.” 

His dumbstruck face: the eyebrows emerged from above the rim of the glasses. “Burned it!” 

“Every last bloody shred, in a barrel in the backyard.” 

“He didn’t keep — ”

Your father had gently suggested that maybe you hang onto at least some bits and bobs in case you ever wanted to go back to it. He had taken everything down from the walls and put it in a few cardboard file boxes for you to peruse when you got home from the hospital. His hand was on your back a lot when you got home and he embraced you for long periods of time. Let’s go for a walk. Let’s go round the pub. Let’s watch the Chelsea game. You hadn’t looked at the boxes for a while — you had asked your father to put them in his study — but after a few weeks you had a bad dream and laid awake all night and in the morning you said, da, d’you think we can burn all this… 

“I didn’t want to keep anything,” you tell Colin. “It’s like poison.” 

“There’s no tapes, no backups — ” 

“Nothing.” The hair’s rising on the back of your neck. “Why?” 

“It was a brilliant game and you’re a brilliant programmer.” 

“It drove me bloody mad.” 

“You weren’t exactly starting from square one on the road to madness,” Colin reminds you. 

\--

The second time: 

Your dad was out. You called Colin up and said, maybe come round and watch some telly. Within ten minutes of his stepping through the door you were upstairs in that little twin bed getting naked. Heretofore it had all been too rushed to progress to this point. “You’ve got more freckles,” he said, touching the one on your chin. Then there was another one on your neck, and your belly… He put his tongue in your navel then he bit you just a little. You wondered if you should put your hands in his hair. You were obsessed by this indecision and then you realized it was because you were waiting to hear something. “Colin,” you said. 

“Hmm.” 

“Can I — ” Your voice kind of twisted and shrunk. Just in the power which was him looking at you Like That. “Can I touch you?” 

“Yeah. You can do whatever you want. I’ll stop you if it’s not alright.” 

Matters progressed. He sat at the head of the bed, legs apart, like a debauched king, and you straddled him. “You’re in control,” he said. 

“I’m in control.” 

“Yeah — yes, you are, you are…” 

You guessed you kind of were in name only because as much as you theoretically controlled the action and were responsible for its execution still he possessed you. He rubbed your back and your hips and then he touched you where you took him inside and whispered all these things in your ear. You were having the feeling that every conceivable reality had converged in this moment and that it would serve as a kind of anchor point in every alternate universe iteration of your life. Quintillions of light-pathways having converged upon this, fucking in your tiny bed, in that shrinking room, dreams in the walls…

“I wish you hadn’t burned it,” he says afterward. He’s holding you so you can’t really do a thing about it but you’re sure at least he feels your heartbeat kick up once, twice… “It was brilliant.” 

“You know I wouldn’t’ve unless I had to.” 

“Well you could’ve just given it to me to finish.” 

You turn on your back in the bed. The moonlight catching in the dust spiraling in the heavy air, over the sheets, blankets, clothing, the empty desk. You stare at him until he meets your eyes. You haven’t seen his eyes melting since the acid trip and anyway he always leaves his glasses on, even during sex, “so I can see you,” he says, but now through the thin magnification they look a little guilty and then they shift away toward the door. 

“It felt like a virus,” you tell him. “Like it would be like a virus, me giving it to you, making you sick.” 

“So you thought about it,” he gathers, eyes shifting toward you for a second, your bare chest and collar, “giving it to me.” 

You had not hesitated before burning it, and you had enjoyed watching it burn. You had put the book itself last on the pile of ashes. But sometimes one is supposed to lie instead of hurting somebody. Right? “I thought about it,” you tell him, wanting it to be over; you’ve only really ever wanted it to be over, “but I didn’t, to protect you.” 

He sighs into your ear and pulls you toward him by the shoulder, petting you, kissing your face. The sweat’s gone cool at the back of your neck and you wonder how close he’ll let you get to him and for how long. “Oh love,” he says, at last, nose in your hair, you’re edge-of-sleep, you’ll dream about him, “you don’t need to protect me…” 

\--

He had come to the hospital once a week at the beginning of visiting hours each Tuesday. It was six Tuesdays and by the last you knew you were going to get out Friday and you had listened to all the Syd Barrett cassettes and also _Piper at the Gates of Dawn_ , which your father had brought, beaming and clapping your shoulder manfully, because he had thought your taste in music was terminally lame. “Well when you get settled will you come round for tea,” Colin said. He escorted you for a walk about the grounds and when none of the nurses were looking you ushered him off the path and behind a shrubbery and planted your mouth on his mouth rather less artfully than you thought you had previously though you had been tripping balls previously and everything had seemed artful. You handed control to him and he seized it. He cupped the back of your neck and took one long breathless draught from you like you were some very strong liquor. You could feel against your chest the cold metallic rings of all his new wave band badges — Joy Division, Can, the Clean… Your knees buckled, and then you heard footsteps on the gravel path and drew away. His lips were wet and very red and he was hard in his jeans, which was less embarrassing and obvious than the fact that you were also hard in your sweatpants. He touched you there with the back of his hand and watched your face. Have me here, you almost said. I don’t fucking care. Throw me down. There were eyes in the windows of the hospital — there were eyes everywhere in the hospital. Behold what madness got me, you’re thinking, staring into Colin’s mouth.

You told your therapist — your new therapist, now that Dr. Haynes had skipped town — about your rabid sexual longing. He said getting your libido back was a solid step on the path to getting yourself back, clapped your shoulder manfully and told you, make sure you use protection. A condom every time. And get tested. 

\--

It must be good for him because of how reverently he says your name. Like you’ve come down from on high to bestow him with eternal life. You’re not sure if it feels good. It feels something and the something is a lot. Most of the world is skin. The light outside the window blurs. You like the way he uses your body. You like feeling useful. Full of use. You find yourself thinking about etymology. After he comes he ties the condom off and puts his fingers back inside you and sucks you. You get the feeling he wants to murder you with pleasure. Behold what madness got me, you think, every muscle strung tight and wringing toward the last, thinking of that Gang of Four song: _and I feel like a beetle on its back…_ There’s a bruise under your fingernail, weaving in the fine hair at the back of his neck. 

He’s not afraid of anything. He’ll hold your hand in a tea shop or a record store. Once he puts his tongue in your ear in the freezer aisle in Sainsburys. Takes a bloody phone call from Thakur whilst naked in bed with you. When you can tell he’s getting bored he gropes under the sheets to stroke your cock. “Well I’ve got Stefan here,” he says indignantly, “do you want to talk to him?” He’s done every drug on earth. He’s done one he says mimics the chemical compound released by the brain at the moment of death. “DMT,” he says. “You might like it. And it’s different, chemically I mean, from LSD, so maybe it won’t — ”

“I shouldn’t try, Colin,” you tell him, “the meds.” 

“Right. Of course.” 

He isn’t even afraid of madness, you realize, lying next to him, can’t sleep. 

To wit, the next morning, blue sky, the light in the bed like a drop of heaven in the clean white sheets, he asks you, “What’s Thorazine like?” 

You’re too shocked to do other than laugh. You kiss his cheekbone. “Close your eyes,” you say. When he does you seal your hand over his far ear and then you put your mouth against the near one and make a shh-ing static noise. “Not so bad,” he says after three full breaths, cracking an eye in your direction. 

“Maybe not for a minute. Gets old quick.” 

“It’s very _One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest_.” 

“It wasn’t that bad really, the hospital.” 

“No straightjackets. No electroshock.” 

“None of it, no.” 

“I thought I was going to go in there, and you’d be chained to the bed and drooling.” 

“Well, you narrowly missed that part.” 

His brow twists. “I would’ve broken you out and carried you out of there.” 

Thinking about it… limp in his arms in the white hospital gown. Earth and sky and brick a blur. Would he sing to you? He would sit at the bedside cooling your fevered brow with a moistened cloth until you came woozily around, pale in the lips and cheeks, blinking the sleep of death away. You understood that if he had truly kidnapped you from the hospital in the early stages the sight of him (sunlight refracting in his glasses, Joy Division on the stereo) would not necessarily have filled you with comfort. Far from it, in fact. But this truth was ignorable, like many of them. “Write a game about it,” you suggested, “why don’t you.” 

“Hmm. Maybe I will.” This close to him you’ve discovered you can almost tell what he’s going to say before he says it. “D’you think you’ll ever make any games again?” 

“Oh, Colin.” You turn away and hide your face in the pillow. The sheets whispering as he turns to touch the exposed ridge of your bare shoulder. “I dunno,” you tell him, meaning it. 

“I think you should try. Just something silly. You can come work for me at Tuckersoft;I’ve got to write a sequel to Metlhedd now, after the shareholders meeting…” 

Maybe he’d known this would rile you up. When you turn back to him, hair catching static, something’s quirked in the corner of his mouth. “I’m not working for you,” you say. 

“Whyever not.” 

“What do they say about workplace… relations. Don’t shit where you eat.” 

“That’s not why,” says Colin. He runs his knuckles down your spine, in and out of the grooves, pushing the sheet down over your back to unwrap you into the sunlight like a present. “You’re think you’re too good to work for me.” 

You dare to tell him, “I am,” knowing what’ll happen, which is that he swats your bare ass with the back of his hand. For once you’re laughing and he’s deadly serious. But how to tell him, _do it harder_ … 

\--

“Have you seen _Blade Runner_ ,” he says, reaching across the back corner table of this minuscule patchouli-smelling tea shop to trace the bones and veins in the back of your hand. 

“No.” 

“Come with me tonight? They’re showing the director’s cut at the Metrograph.” 

The theater’s rather seedy and the film practically melting on the reel. He holds your hand in the darkness and loudly munches popcorn. When it ends you accompany him to a pub where he orders you a cranberry juice with so little embarrassment it strikes you as utterly brass-balled. “Never quite got the ending,” he says, shoving a coaster under the short leg of the back corner table so it won’t wobble. Then he spends about two minutes bitching about the quantity of head on his Guinness. 

“You didn’t get the ending,” you remind him when he shuts up. 

“No. Never have. Did you?” 

Sometimes one is supposed to lie instead of hurting somebody. Or instead of revealing some kind of difficult truth about oneself. Or instead of leading conversation down a pathway certain to become imminently uncomfortable. So, “No,” you lie. 

On the Tube home, late, listening to Colin’s Devo cassette, your mouth tastes like cranberries and his heady, beery alley kisses, you begin to understand what happened to you like science fiction. You too possess a kind of replicant mind possessed of memories which can be known and influenced by remote forces. Unfortunately it makes the genre rather predictable. 

\--

Colin’s got takeaway curry on the table still warm when you show up after your therapist appointment. The sunset streaming into the kitchen from the balcony and the wide windows in somber golden shades over the city sprawl. He downs two lagers but you’re obliged to quell the spice with water because of what your therapist called the “catastrophic consequences” of mixing alcohol with even your now-lowish dose of antipsychotics. He's got Gary Numan’s _Pleasure Principle_ on the turntable and you can understand for a precious moment that the light is like the sound — heavy, melancholy golden planes refracting dust, descending, changing… 

“Can I ask you something,” Colin says, gathering the dishes. 

“Sure.” 

“How’d you get through the secret agent bit?” 

He can’t be fucking serious. 

“How’d I — what?” 

“I can’t for the life of me figure out how you programmed that.” 

He won’t — can’t look at you. Probably doesn’t want to see your face, which you figure looks like a painting by Goya. 

“Colin,” you tell him measuredly, “it wasn’t me. So I don’t know.” 

“But it was — ”

“You’ve no idea what it was like. It wasn’t me. I don’t remember.” 

The trouble is you probably can remember if you try. The drugs you’re on have stacked up a nice wall of bricks around it but it’s there. 

Now he looks at you. His glasses spark with radioactive sunset light. He’s got the look about him like he won’t take no for an answer. To wit, he ignores you entirely. “Did you make it a choice of three? Because that's the only way I can think to go about it. But it complicates what happens after, not to mention the entire baseline…” 

You stand up quite carefully so as not to knock the chair over. You don't really want a row; it’s him that wants a row, or so you’re telling yourself, watching him brace just so when you get to your feet, lowering his center of gravity. Must be something on your face. You’ve never come to fisticuffs with him before. Not in real life, at least. 

“I don’t remember,” you try, again. 

“Can’t you try?” 

“No.” 

“But — ” 

You wait for him to finish. But he doesn’t, or perhaps he can’t. It gives you an evil little thrill — even he knows there’s no _but_. Even he knows, deep down, that you’re right. 

“We have to pretend it never existed,” you tell him. 

“I don’t want to. It changed the world of video games forever — just the concept, let alone your code. We can’t pretend it never existed. It prefigured the future and if we don't act on it — ”

You sort of realize what you’re going to say as you say it and after you say it you realize that you’ve been thinking it sometimes when you wake up in the morning, at the edge of dreams, in the deep cradling lull before you take your pills, in your maddest mind, which is your realest mind: “Is that why you keep me around?” 

There’s a sharp edge to your voice which strikes and deflates him. The light in the room goes thin and wan with symbolic-seeming swiftness now that the sun’s slipped under the horizon. “Stefan,” he says. 

“Rather an obvious plot,” you tell him. Pulling a loose thread. Later you will remember with a twisted pride how steady you managed to keep your voice. “Obviously I was quite lonely. And obviously queer, given the Thompson Twins. And obviously obsessed with you. And obviously… mentally fucked up.” 

“Stefan, I don’t — ”

“Why would you — me? Here’s the most obvious bit of all. When you can — do already have anybody else you want. So I figure there has to be some other reason. And because you love asking me about the bloody thing when you know — ” 

Colin, seeing an opening, advances on you with predatory grace. “I don’t get just anybody I want,” he says, herding you against the wall. “But I’ve got this one quite sweet little thing. Dead shaggable, he is.” 

“Is he.” 

“Bloody mad too.” 

“Yeah?” 

“Yeah. He doesn’t frighten me.” 

“Maybe he should.” 

He kisses just your lower lip and then worries it in his teeth. “Maybe,” he says. “Where would be the fun in that?” 

You push back against him. It wasn’t fun, isn’t fun, you want to say, need to say, are saying with these biting kisses, don’t you fucking get it? Something in the shrinking wedge of your rational brain reminds you likely this is all part of his master plan to get your blood up, not that he doesn’t have thousands of other ways to do that. He pulls away. Even in the dim light his lips are red as paint. He touches his tongue to his sharpest tooth and a smile pulls the corner of his mouth up. “Come on,” he says. 

In the living room there’s half a joint in the ashtray. He sparks it and takes a hit, hissing, then passes it your way. Behind his glasses an implicit dare wrinkles the corners of his eyes. So you take it. You’re feeling like you can’t allow yourself to be bested but perhaps this too is the product of manipulation. The paper’s warm, and the telltale orangey shade of Kitty’s lipstick is on the wet end. This time you don’t cough. He kisses half the smoke out of your mouth. 

“Where do you want it,” he asks you. “On the bed?” 

“You don’t just — get me — ”

“Don’t I?” 

You shove him again and again it turns into a kiss. Bruising. Your thumb finds the pulse in his neck just too tightly to be comfortable. Something shifts — oil and water. You can feel him give you something, like Kate Bush sneaking her lover the key to his handcuffs on the cover of _The Dreaming_. “Here, then,” he says, pulling away. 

You can feel the pot hit your brain. Every word splinters off into a thousand glimmering pathways of endless vengeful thought. His eyes behind the glasses have magnified themselves. He keeps the condoms in a little box like the one where he keeps the acid. When he stands up, flipping one between his first two fingers like a playing card, he presses it into your open hand. 

Stoned Brain understands the meaning of this and suffuses itself in a heady blend of future-ecstasy and suffocating terror. Sober Brain, shrinking, goes, “What — ”

“How about you have me.” 

“Um — ” 

“Should’ve asked you before really. Not fair to make… assumptions.” 

He looks you over, reviewing the cause of said assumptions. That you're littler, shorter and thinner, that you dress poorly, talk poorly, listen to shitty synth-pop, have recently had a nervous breakdown, that your mom’s dead, that your relationship with your father is Rocky At Best — that everything about you kind of screams _repressed_ … Were it not for Stoned Brain you think you might be enraged. “Alright,” you tell him. Making a fist around the condom. “You’ve got to help me.” 

“Of course.” He throws himself down on the couch and undoes each and every button on his jeans with maximal patience whilst staring at your mouth. “Why don’t you put on the Velvets.” 

He has all the vinyl but the correct choice is obviously _Loaded_. Your hand’s trembling on the needle so it starts toward the middle of “Sweet Jane.” “Fuck,” announces Colin from the couch. “Yeah.” 

“Yeah?” 

“God, yeah.” 

You go right back to him like you’re a magnet, tripping over your feet. “Get your bloody kit off,” he tells you, tugging at the hem of your sweatshirt. “You’ve the hottest, fucking weirdest little body, do you know that? Did anybody ever tell you that?” 

“Just you.” 

“And the hottest, weirdest… big, fat, crazy mind. Do you know that?” 

“Yes — well. Hottest is new.” 

He kisses all over your face and you kiss all over his face and together you tumble onto the shag carpet. He lands on top of you and then engineers another roll, faking the pressure of gravity. You haven’t really had reason to think before about how long his legs are until he hitches one knee over your shoulder. Suddenly you find it’s all you can think about, really, how long his legs are. You feel as though you’ve sat down before an extremely important exam you haven’t prepared for or alternatively a ten course meal you’ll never be able to finish… “You know what to do,” he says. 

“Do I?” 

His hand runs from your neck down to your chest and palms where your racing heart is. “Trust yourself,” he says. “I trust you.” 

\--

“Do you remember telling me that, like, time wasn't real, and you could go back and fix your decisions, and there were infinite timelines…” 

“Well yeah,” says Colin, rolling another joint. “Dimly. Considering we were fucking blasted.” 

“Yeah.” 

“Why? I mean — ”

“Fucked me up, man.” 

“You were already fucked up,” he points out, fairly. 

“Yeah. But it was like you gave me the external go-ahead.” 

“It wasn’t — I thought about it as setting you free really — ”

“Yes — not your fault. You said that. But I figure maybe… absolute freedom is not really the way to go for me.” 

You watch him spark the joint. His cheeks hollowing upon the deep inhale twanging some chord inside you. “How very sad,” he says. 

“I think I would rather sort of — not live everything I maybe could rather than feel like that again. Because it was really quite — intense. To say the bloody least. I did feel like I had gotten into some quite pure truth, you know. But then when I was there I hated knowing it.” 

He studies you again, gentler this time. Trying to see inside your mind. “Can I tell you a story,” he asks. 

“Sure.”

“Kitty talked me down the first time I did mushrooms,” he tells you. “Literally, down. From a ledge on the fourteenth-floor balcony of the council estate where her brother lived at the time, in Sheffield. I had met her once or twice before that because her brother was a coder at this place, Tunguska Games, know them?” 

“Yeah — ‘Life in the Hive.’” 

“He did all the graphics on that one.” 

“No way.” 

“Yeah. Brilliant guy really. Just like Kit… but anyway, that night, I was absolutely certain if I jumped nothing would happen. I would wake up somewhere — sometime else. But she said, If you jump here you’ll still jump here and you’ll die here, and I’ll still be here, remembering — ”

“Colin.” 

“What?” 

“Can we — sorry. Let’s not talk about that.” 

Regret transforms his face like dawn. _I love you_ enters your mind in a shocking, sudden flash and then moves away again. He practically falls on you and covers you with kisses. “Sorry,” he says, “oh, God, sorry, sorry.” 

“It’s alright.” 

He props his fist against your chest and rests his chin on it. “What I’m trying to say is, maybe we all need somebody who can be a sort of filter from the quite pure truth, and she was mine then. And I’m yours now.” 

“Are you.” 

“Yeah. I’ll fight anything.” 

“Anything?” 

He kisses the join of your neck and collar where your voice vibrates. That assured grin spreads across his face like butter and you can feel your own smile mimic it, reflexively. “I’ll fight existence,” he says. “I’ll fight nothingness.” 

\--

It’s dawn. The light wedging a crack under the world. You disentangle yourself from the tentacular web of his limbs to feel your way through the dark apartment for a glass of water and to piss. The dishes are still stacked scraped half-clean on the edge of the sink where he’d left him and the faucet drips arrhythmically. On the fridge: kids’ fluorescent letter magnets prop up a postcard for Colin’s game White Bear, assorted emergency numbers, important dates, a Christmas card, a wedding invitation, a middling review torn out of _Computer and Video Games_ magazine. Only when alone do you feel the strange, precisely measured weight of what’s technically sanctioned infidelity bearing down curiously at the edges of your consciousness. You press your forehead to the cool kitchen window where a little of the light in the east is just visible over the shadowy city skyline. There's no more sleeping. Here in the trough (like the low point between seven waves, the seven waves being your antipsychotic dose), one worry begets others: probably you weren’t any good. And probably he’ll never tell you that you weren’t any good, but also probably he’ll never let you do it again. Which would be too bad because, of course, you liked it, quite a lot, and probably you could get better, like with practice. He was already quite practiced and you could tell. But all that was more fuel for the prior fire. 

Your new therapist had suggested active distraction when your mind got in the trap. You check your watch. Two and a half hours left until the little alarm goes off that will indicate time for pills. All of Colin’s comics and raunchy novels and video game magazines are in the living room where he’s presently asleep, but you know he keeps his guitar in his and Kitty’s office to keep it away from the baby. Your mom used to play, and in the hospital, toward the end, you’d taught yourself two chords, which Colin had showed you how to strum in roughly the rhythm of Devo’s “Freedom of Choice.” 

When you put the office light on it catches the well-worn silvery pegs on the headstock of Colin’s acoustic, partly walled off by a stack of coding books and game cartridges. The dim light shows your reflection in the bulbous grey-black mirror-eye of the chunky PC on the desk — hair disheveled, unslept eyes, sweats on backward, a hickey at the join of your neck and collar — and stacks of papers, piled and scattered; half-hidden under a slipping sheaf of them is the fat spine of a book printed in familiar neons. 

Your heart kicks into your throat. Something invisible reaches out from the mess on the desk and wraps around you like a shepherd’s crook in a kids' cartoon. You approach it, or it approaches you. You shift the papers as though you don’t already know what you’ll see. Colin’s chunky handwriting and graceful code delineates familiar pathways. A pixellated print-screen of the lion’s face drapes over the book itself like a dropcloth over bloodstained furniture. It's a new copy, crisp, spine unbroken. The sight of it drives a sledgehammer through the meticulous and fragile repair you’ve managed to make to your mind. 

“Stefan?” 

You can see him distorted in the PC reflection making no sudden movements. Lifting his empty hands as though you were a frightened animal. 

From the wreckage: 

DESTROY COMPUTER     ///     KILL HIM

Abort and disrupt all signal reception. You clap your hands over your ears, squeeze your eyes shut. Knees break, hips break. Scream. 

\--

Your father is at your bedside inside a soft white cloud having wrapped your limp hand in his own. He shifts when he sees your eyes, clasps your hand, you think you’re clasping his, too, but you can’t feel anything… “Stefan,” he says. 

“Da.” 

“Thank god. Are you alright?” 

Saying something is like stretching toward something golden just at the edge of your reach, presently settling at the bottom of a pool of frigid cold water. “Where — ” 

“Back at the hospital, I’m afraid. Do you remember what happened?” 

You shake your head, even though you think you do remember. You can feel the wound inside your head. Infinitesimal movement is all you can manage, given that all the machinery that governs your mobility feels packed in with cotton. 

“Had another episode,” your father says. “Lucky your friend reacted very sensibly.” 

“Colin.” 

“Yes, he called an ambulance and then he called me.” 

“Is he — ”

“He said he’ll be by. They gave you — maybe you can tell. Big honking needle. I couldn't watch, myself.” 

You nod, which is really just a weak movement of your chin. In your peripheral you can see the blood-filled bandage inside your elbow where they must have administered the shot. And you can see that you’re cuffed to the bed by your wrists and ankles with shearling-lined leather restraints. 

“Don’t try to move,” your father tells you. You hadn’t been aware you were trying. His hand moves to your shoulder where his touch is warm through the thin fabric of the white hospital gown. “Try to sleep. I’ll be right here. It’s alright.” 

Even though the haze — it’s not just thorazine, you can tell, even like this; it’s heavier, like piles of wool and down, like being buried alive — you can recognize these obvious lies. But you can also decide to believe them. 

\--

Luckily, by the time Thakur shows up, the doctors have deemed your flight and self-harm risk to be low enough that they let you out into the rec room sans restraints. Some of the residents on this ward you recognize from last time, slouched in wheelchairs or in the moth-eaten plaid embrace of one of the deep degraded couches absently staring at the TV or at the same page in _National Geographic’s Images of the World_ for hours on end. The newly heightened antipsychotic dose won’t let you dig deep enough to name that vicarious fear. You live at the surface of your mind. Occasionally you think of Colin; when you do, something happens that you don’t really understand and the nurses come in prepping the hypodermic… 

When Thakur shows up you've gotten your hands on the dog-eared hospital copy of _Images of the World_ (every image containing nudity and/or violence has been, of course, surgically excised) and can’t tear your eyes from a picture of a cave filled with crystals the size of aircraft carriers. “New settings, eh,” says the boss man, eyes crinkling, crouching to your eye level before you even understand who’s speaking to you. 

“Mohan.” 

“Stefan.” He smiles. Even like this you can note his evident discomfort. “My little Van Gogh.” 

“Where’s Colin.” 

“In the office finishing up Ban— ” 

“Is he alright?” 

His brow furrows. “As alright as he ever is.” 

In the lull between the seven waves, which comes at dawn, when you’re awake to feel it, you understand the precise argument that must be made. What Davies created in the abstract and what you half-delivered into the world mutated and screaming and what Colin is now endeavoring to tug the rest of the way into life is a kind of mental virus which infects one’s ability to make choices. As evidenced by what you’ve experienced, there’s no cure — only middling prevention from recurrence in the form of near-toxic doses of antipsychotics. The release of the game would in all likelihood visit this virus on untold millions. This argument now slipping through your blunted brain like very fine sand through loosely webbed fingers, all you can manage is, “You can’t.” 

“I can’t what. Release it?” Thakur stands, sighing, knees cracking. “Stefan, I don’t know if you understand — ”

“It’s dangerous.” 

Thakur runs a hand through his hair, showing his widows peak. “We had a shareholder’s meeting last month. Colin might’ve mentioned it. The board… well, let’s just say they weren’t too happy having to eat that fucking monumental advertising budget. I explained to them that the game’s creator went insane. But I think you’ll find, when you grow up, that the pressures of free market capitalism supersede… um, most other concerns.” 

You winnow through that deep dark pool for two golden words. “Fuck you.” 

Thakur ignores you. “I asked Colin to give it another shot. You’ll be glad to hear he did put up a bit of a fight. But he gave in pretty quickly when I told him about the money.” 

Your mouth’s dry. Something hurts behind your eyes. 

“It’s kill or be killed, kid,” Thakur says. 

“I know.” 

“Do you?” He ruffles your hair a little aggressively. “Come to think of it,” he says, “you can do me one favor.” 

“What.” 

“Call off your father, for the love of god.” 

“My — ”

“He’s threatening to sue me for putting you at psychological risk. Now he says he can throw intellectual property theft into the mix…” 

Assembling a rebuttal like a Scrabble play takes so long Thakur twitches toward the door. You find you’re glad this place frightens him. “Call off the game,” you manage at last. 

He gives a shaky laugh. You manage a very forced smile that’s probably more a death-mask grimace. You make sure your eyes follow him all the way to the gate, where a nurse checks him out. That he dares a frightenedish look back your way once he’s secure in the world of the sane seems a middling victory. 

\--

Next among the visitors, the perhaps-predictable return of the prodigal: 

“I was trying to figure out a way to gently break it to you. Maybe should’ve known you’d catch on.” 

Reality develops into the rec room like an old photograph, metallic, hyperexposed. Afternoon light across the scuffed wood floor. Colin’s sitting on the armrest of the couch beside your wheelchair tracing the bones and veins in your limp hand. The sight of him moves your heart as much as it can jostle in all the tight cotton wrapping. 

“There you are,” he says. 

“Here.” 

“What’ve they got you on? Anything good?” 

It takes maximal effort to turn your hand over. He accepts the invitation and slides his fingers between yours, expression opening, like he recognizes you, like he sees you… You squeeze as hard as you can and twist your hand until it must hurt him. It likely hurts you too, but you can’t feel anything. 

“I probably deserve that,” he says. 

A memory of sex with him surfaces from the primordial deeps, humiliation being the only emotion you’ve yet identified with a steady enough blade to cut through the overwhelming fog. His chest against your back, his lips at your ear, his fingers in your mouth… He frees his hand from your grip so he can hold it again how he wants. You manage to meet his eyes. 

“I really was — well. I thought you might be interested to know, when it, when we started…” He trails off; so does his eye contact. His thumb tracing over the very thin skin at your wrist, at the hem of your hospital gown. “He didn't ask me to do the game until after the shareholder’s meeting. Which was just a month ago. So I wanted to make sure you knew that I didn’t — enter into any of this with the intention to use you.” 

“He mentioned the money.” 

“Yes, well. I’ve a child, you know. It’ll get her through a Ph.D.” He sighs. “Like I said I was trying — ” 

“You didn’t believe me.” 

“Well of course I — ”

You tug your hand away from his tender clutches and let it drop into your lap. Your vision goes skittering across the floor into the far corner like a dropped die. 

“Stefan,” Colin tries, “of course I believe you, it’s only — how are you certain that what happened to you will happen to anybody else?” 

All you can do is fix him with your unruly eyes. Even if you could speak — there’s nothing to say. He knows this, so he goes on: 

“I wish it was so simple — that we could just leave it be. But now that Tuckersoft owns the rights — and wouldn’t you rather it was me and not some — ” 

“No.” 

Your voice shocks him. “Sorry?” 

“I wouldn’t rather — please.” He waits while you gather your scattered thoughts into your voice. “I couldn’t bear it.” 

“I’m perfectly alright. No delusions — no nothing. Nothing to fear.” His searching eyes find the nurses in the corner of the room, who have focused their mercurial attentions on a patient who’s passed out in _Images of the World_. Like a blind man his touch studies your face: bones, hollows, skin, warm places, cold places, sticky eyelids, the corner of your mouth. His voice the only sound in the world. But it was like this even before. “Don’t you believe I love you?” 

You don’t want to nod, but you do anyway. Your subconscious — your rawest mind — the most alien possessor of all. 

“Then you understand,” he whispers. “It’s beyond our control.” 

Your eyes meet his. The light through the window reflects abstract particulars of the room in the lens of his glasses. “What is,” you ask him. 

He shrugs. “The game.” Leaning back on the armrest. “It’s the nature of the beast.” 

_Control_ , you can't help but notice. _Beast_. “What are you saying.” 

“We like to think we’re high above it all, you know,” he tells you. “Artist types, computer types. Computer artist types. But our work exists within given parameters. Structures of things. Bloody ones and zeroes. Freedom is an illusion. But you're the last person who needs to be told that, aren’t you.” 

You nod again, feeling the clockwork, trying to wrap your bruised and bandaged mind around it through the heavy fog. Mission parameters — binary code — 

He stands and presses his lips high on your numb cheekbone. You close your eyes. History rewinds and time repeats. _I’ll try again._ “I’ll be seeing you,” he says. “Shine on, you crazy diamond.”

\--

-

**Author's Note:**

> this story is named after [the record by gary numan](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Kv0yLg4LBQ&list=PLjIuADMrDKIZcaH6j6jRK1MWzwwB1PrKD) ... though i will say s&c's relationship reminds me more of ["are friends electric"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lllHxxj_Yhc). 
> 
> ["shine on you crazy diamond"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWGE9Gi0bB0) is a pink floyd song written in honor of the band's founding member syd barrett, who was kicked out of the band after exacerbating his mental health issues with incredible amounts of LSD. 
> 
> i'm [here on tumblr](http://yeats-infection.tumblr.com/)


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